West Bengal is among the exceptions, like most Opposition-ruled states; there are no bulldozers razing down homes of public offenders nor does the Mamata Banerjee government threaten to extract payment for damage to public property. — PTI
West Bengal’s politics between the last Assembly election in 2021 and the two-phase one that will begin on April 23 has been like an action-packed thriller, albeit a five-year-long series. There has been blood, violence, murder and rape, crimes against women, corruption, intimidation, flirtations and near reconciliations. Now the drama is about to reach its conclusion.
The dramatis personae are the usual suspects: Mamata Banerjee as chief minister and founder of Trinamul Congress, the remote-controlled BJP with its local commanders, the Congress, the CPI(M)-led Left Front and new entrants, who have fizzled out even before the cracker went pop like the Aam Janata Unnayan Party of Humayun Kabir, caught on camera in a video he insists was doctored, and the Indian Secular Front, a party launched in 2021 by Nawsad Siddique, its only legislator. There were an abundance of dubious bureaucrats, policemen, doctors and legislators, all adding to the thrills. Plus, there is the Election Commission, that instead of being an independent and impartial institution delivering a service, that is voting, has become a party in this election; a lot of voters will deliver a verdict on its performance.
And then there are the people. They split out into the streets, outraged by a horrifying attack on a junior doctor raped and murdered inside a state-run hospital, that made prime-time news in India and globally. There was a football mess over Lionel Messi’s Kolkata visit. The Durga Puja, contrary to the BJP propaganda that its celebration was obstructed by Mamata Banerjee, acquired Unesco’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity tag and became a money-spinner.
The decline and fall of West Bengal, once an industrial leader, and its capital Kolkata, jewel in the British Empire’s crown, has not been reversed, despite promises by every government since 1947 that it will be a destination for overseas investors.
Unemployment is bad, though not much worse than anywhere else in India, with joblessness growing and crossing 5.1 per cent for people above 15. The infrastructure is not adequate, but bridges don’t collapse nor do new roads or under-construction roads cave in or break up.
There are recruitment scandals and money is allegedly siphoned off to enrich various characters within the ruling establishment. The police, the Opposition claims, works at the behest of local TMC bahubalis; though to their credit, the police isn’t trigger-happy. West Bengal is among the exceptions, like most Opposition-ruled states; there are no bulldozers razing down homes of public offenders nor does the Mamata Banerjee government threaten to extract payment for damage to public property.
There is communal polarisation and outbreaks of low-level communal violence, which academics like Maidul Islam see as an emerging pattern in India that signals the BJP’s growing presence and ambitions to oust the existingset-up and install itself as the ruling party. However, West Bengal devours fish, meat and eggs, to the point that the BJP, to rid itself of the reputation of imposing vegetarianism wherever it comes to power, has candidates in the 2026 Assembly elections who campaign holding aloft fish to prove their credentials as true-blue Bengalis, or, at least, tolerant about the food preferences of the majority.
The first phase of the two-part election in West Bengal will cover 152 constituencies out of the 294 Assembly segments. These seats include the high-altitude constituency of Darjeeling and the seashore-hugging constituencies in East Midnapore. Seven of nine districts that share a border with Bangladesh — Murshidabad, Malda, Uttar Dinajpur and Dakshin Dinajpur, Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling — will go to the polls on April 23.
Contrary to expectations, anti-incumbency feelings, that are relatively stronger now than in 2021, are not the dominant issue in this election. The focus of voters is on something up close and personal; deletion of names from the voters’ list by the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls carried out by the Election Commission, that has bulldozed its way through a process where the old manuals and rules were pushed aside and new rules were made up on an almost day-to-day basis to deal with whatever struck the institutions as anomalies or hurdles.
It’s difficult to gauge the exact effect of the BJP’s high-powered and loud campaign against “ghuspaithiyas”, illegal immigrants and infiltrators, masquerading as voters and Indian citizens aided and abetted by the TMC and its predecessors who ruled in West Bengal. The BJP has promised to bring in the Uniform Civil Code within six months of taking over in the state; the prospect doesn’t seem to have polarised voters to the point that the tension is palpable.
People are preoccupied with the fate of 34 lakh voters whose cases are timed to be resolved by April 21 under orders by the Supreme Court, exercising its extraordinary powers under Article 142 on the Constitution in the interests of “complete justice”. In other words, the Supreme Court did see injustice in the exclusion of 34 lakh voters from participating in the election and exercising the fundamental right to choose their representative and a party to run the government. As a fraction of the 6.44 crore voters eligible to vote in this election, 34 lakhs is not a large number; but the mood of significant numbers of electors is, to Mamata Banerjee’s advantage, focused on the fate of the excluded.
By the usual norms of elected democracies, a turnover of ruling parties is not a cataclysmic event. For five years, West Bengal has been preoccupied by the likelihood of just such a convulsion; should Mamata Banerjee be ousted; should the BJP be welcomed to run a “double-engine sarkar” controlled from Delhi; can the Left revive itself; can the Congress reinvent itself?
The deletion of 91 lakh names from the electoral roll and the EC’s often bizarre doings and sayings have not enamoured Bengalis, except admittedly the BJP’s hardcore voters, who can see no wrong in whatever is done by any institution, agency or individual controlled by or independent of the Narendra Modi government at the Centre. The pain inflicted by the SIR process over six months by the EC in Delhi — in terms of time taken, anxieties experienced, loss of income for daily wage and gig workers — has not endeared the BJP and the Centre to a lot of voters, who are critical and angry with the Mamata Banerjee government, though not necessarily, the leader.
The end of the series episodes in the long-running thriller will gather together all the loose ends and deliver a verdict or resolution that will answer all the usual questions on Muslim vote banks, Hindu core support and women’s choices.
